AUGUST 16, 1960

NEW YORK—Life is a strange thing, and the only thing we can ever be sure of is the unexpected.

I went to Hyde Park the past Friday to meet a group of Roosevelt School children from
Shippan Point, Stamford, Conn., and later to talk with about 50 Democratic women leaders
from the Hyde Park Congressional district about the campaign activities of our candidate
for Congress, Gore Vidal.

Just as the women were about to leave the telephone rang, and my son John was calling
from Calais, Maine, near Campobello Island, where he and his wife had gone for a 10-day
holiday three days earlier. He said:

"Mummy, it is Sally. She is unconscious in St. Luke's Hospital in Utica. They have
been working on her to try to bring her back. We are chartering a plane to come down.
Will you send your car with Tubby to meet us in Utica?"

("Sally" was Sara Delano Roosevelt, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John A. Roosevelt, who
had been injured in a fall from a horse at the Moss Lake School for Girls camp near
Old Forge, N.Y.)

John gave me a few more directions on things he wanted me to do, which I carried out
promptly. In less than half an hour the word came back to me that this beautiful,
alive, lovely child was dead.

Somehow the guests departed from Hyde Park without, I hope, knowing what had happened.
I realized they would know soon enough. I hoped, too, that my poor son and his wife
would not know Sally had gone until they reached Utica. But John called the hospital
again and was given the final report that all efforts to save her had been useless
and she was gone before they took off.

Every mother and father will know what it means to lose a child. Each year of their
life adds memories and love, and when a blow like this falls, way down where others
cannot join them parents go through the joy and agony of memory. The feel of a little
body between their hands, the first looks of recognition, and then deeper and deeper
understanding that comes through the eyes between parents and their children, the
joys and sorrows they have shared.

I know, for instance, that every time Anne watches the children in the swimming pool
her heart will ache for the slim young figure that was so graceful and so quick, such
a good swimmer, such a good horsewoman. And every time John does something with the
horses he will think of his most constant companion, the one who loved them as he
did, who liked to fetch and care for horses, who loved to ride, and who made her father
proud by her horsemanship.

These are the little things which make up the day-by-day life of a family, and two
parents who have centered a great deal of their lives around their family have greater
joys perhaps, but the pain of separation never completely fades away.

There is no explanation for tragedies as we feel them in the loss of a young life,
but we must believe there is a reason which wisdom beyond our own can understand.
We have to know that those who suffer in life are those who have the most understanding
and love to give and who can help others more because they know what suffering is
from personal experience.

It would all be a waste unless it meant that poor human beings who have loved and
suffered much will, in the future, be able to give more, not only to their own, but
to others not quite so close as their family circle.

The greatest value in living is to gain in understanding and to be able to give from
the depths of one's understanding some small help and strength to others when they
too are in trouble.